2017: The year the cars got burgled

2017 started out great. (Well, the race did.) There was little rain, mild weather, and a small field of competitors due to our having been dead a year, so it felt a little like the old days. The pancakes were hot and fluffy thanks to Betsy, the timing crew of Leslie Miller, Jill Hudson and Rich Menzel were cheerful and efficient, and the cars in the parking lot all had windows.

…except one.

A little after 8:30 someone said, “Someone broke out a window over here!” There was a car, a bunch of glass and a purse-shaped void in someone’s day. A neighbor came over to help out, saying “This happens all the time here.” And one of our runners and his wife spent the rest of the day fixing the car, canceling credit cards, and driving home from what was going to be a nice run in the park.

After that we all became much more vigilant, looking for anyone suspicious. Loopy the race director looked in all the garbage cans in the area for a tossed carcass of a purse, but found nothing.

Then it happened again. This time one of our runners saw the guy reaching into the car, yanking out a purse that had been hidden under the sun shade out of sight in the back, then diving into a truck and speeding off. Another runner, an off-duty cop, got the plate, so we played with trying to find the culprit, but the truck was a rental, probably rented under a fake ID, so we were at a dead-end. Obviously they had someone there as a spotter, watching and telling the break-in guys where to look. We never figured out who the spotter was.

It was a total bummer, but the race went on as usual, with runners racking up personal records but not course records. Food was eaten, jokes were told, and the rain was mostly well-behaved.

And then near the end of the race the car alarm went off. When we looked, it was the same damn truck speeding off. Three purses in one day, right from under our noses. We packed up, went home, had a couple of shots of bourbon and called it a day. One hell of a day.

Bring your crappiest purse if you join us next year, and leave it empty. Or better yet, put a bear trap in it.